Collective Ministerial Responsibility

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley. The debate is surprisingly topical. Only two hours ago in the Chamber, in response to an urgent question from the Opposition, the Minister responsible for press regulation, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, answered on behalf of not the Government, but the Conservative party, which I thought was rather bizarre. There followed a contribution from the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech)—who is not a member of the Government or part of ministerial collective responsibility—who purported to make a statement on behalf of the Liberal Democrat party. Surely the whole purpose of collective ministerial responsibility is to ensure that there is certainty outside about the Government’s view on a particular issue, so that they do not speak with forked tongue.

Although I welcome the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), who will respond to the debate, I am rather disappointed that the Prime Minister is not here in person, because it was primarily his failure to answer my written questions on how he exercises collective ministerial responsibility that caused me to request the debate.

I started asking questions about the subject in December. I asked the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr Maude)—to whom my question to the Prime Minister was transferred—about the number of occasions on which collective ministerial responsibility had been set aside in this Parliament. I received a non-answer. I then went to ask some questions directly of the Prime Minister, but again my questions were not answered. Some of those non-answers are referred to in the briefing that is available to hon. Members. I will not go through those answers, because they are not answers. I could not understand why the Prime Minister was so reluctant to be accountable to Members of Parliament and put a straight answer to a straight question on how many occasions collective ministerial responsibility had been set aside.

After the set of answers—or non-answers—from the Prime Minister, I asked specific questions about what had happened in relation to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill last month. During consideration of Lords amendments, the Leader of the House of Commons announced that collective ministerial responsibility had been set aside—the first time that we have heard officially that that has happened—and, in answer to my intervention, explained that that was the Prime Minister’s decision. Following that, I asked the Prime Minister on what day he had set aside ministerial responsibility in relation to the Bill and the reasons for that. I have had no answers to those questions; in fact, I have had a deliberate refusal to answer. I cannot understand why, because I thought that the Government were interested in transparency and openness and that they would want to put their answers on the record.

My last stab at trying to get some answers from the Prime Minister was in the form of questions, which were answered on Monday this week. I asked,

“what the arrangements are for informing Ministers of the setting aside of collective ministerial responsibility in respect of votes in the House”

and

“on how many occasions a formal Cabinet decision has been made to set aside collective ministerial responsibility in the last 12 months.”

The answer I received was:

“It has been the practice of successive Governments not to disclose information relating to internal discussions”—

I did not ask about internal discussions, of course—

“information or forums in which decisions are made.”—[Official Report, 11 February 2013; Vol. 558, c. 462W.]

Apparently that is the Government’s policy.

However, that does not fit in well with a report in The Daily Telegraph on 15 January, by Tim Ross, about the “revolt”—as he put it—in the upper Chamber by six of the seven Liberal Democrat Front Benchers, who voted against the coalition Government on the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill. He wrote:

“Downing Street said Prime Minister David Cameron would seek to overturn the amendment in the Commons, but without an overall…majority the parliamentary arithmetic is against him. The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg had formally agreed to suspend the convention of ‘collective responsibility’ which applies to all Cabinet ministers on Government decisions. No. 10 said the decision to suspend ministerial responsibility, agreed before the Lords vote yesterday, was ‘the first time it has happened under this Coalition’.”

In a sense, a No. 10 spokesman was giving answers to my parliamentary questions, which the Prime Minister himself had refused to answer before the House. I find that extraordinary.

The situation was compounded. The article continued:

“Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, witnessed and recorded the agreement between the Tory and Lib Dem leaders yesterday and ruled that the approach was permissible under current rules governing the ministerial code.”

Where does that fit in with the non-answer that I received from the Prime Minister, saying that it is not the practice to disclose information relating to internal discussions, information or forums in which decisions are made?

The article continued:

“‘Having consulted the Cabinet Secretary they (Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg) have recorded their agreement to set aside collective responsibility on this occasion,’ the spokesman said.”

My concerns are, first, to see whether we can get the issue of collective ministerial responsibility out in the open, and secondly, to chide the Government and the Prime Minister—I have to name him, as head of the Government —for not following the policy that he has said he would follow, which is to promote transparency in government.

In a speech the Prime Minister made on 26 May 2009, titled “Fixing broken politics”, he said, under the sub-heading of “Transparency”, that

“there’s one more item on the agenda: transparency. Ask most people where politics happens and they’d paint a picture of tight-knit tribes making important decisions in wood-panelled rooms, speaking a strange language. If we want people to have faith and get involved, we need to defeat this impression by opening politics up—making everything transparent, accessible and human. And the starting point for reform should be a near-total transparency of the political and governing elite, so people can see what is being done in their name.”

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for spelling out his argument. Before the upper House broke ranks, as it were, when some Liberals voted with the Labour party and most Conservatives voted with the Government, was it clear that that would happen? Those of us who just read the newspapers were told that it was a surprise; we were not told that it was planned in advance by the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, because the revolt was on primary legislation, whereas the only issue on which the Deputy Prime Minister had given notice that he would lead his troops in the opposite direction to the rest of the coalition was when, in August, he said he would withdraw his support for any Boundary Commission proposals put through the House via a statutory instrument. The revolt must have come as a bit of a surprise, but back in August he was giving public notice that he himself would set aside collective Cabinet responsibility, with or without the Prime Minister’s consent. In light of the information I have set out, it seems as though there was no consent at that stage to set aside collective ministerial responsibility.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Nick Harvey (North Devon) (LD)]

We have listened to an interesting analysis of what is going on from the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), whose basic underlying thesis seems to be that all the constitutional arrangements that apply in the event of a single-party Government should carry on in exactly the same way in instances of a coalition.

I understand entirely why a very conservative sort of Conservative would believe that business should carry on as usual, because he would have an aversion to change and indeed to novelty. However, I put it to the hon. Gentleman that if he wishes for business to continue as usual, and if he expects things to continue just as they do under a single-party Government, he and his colleagues will simply have to go to the trouble of winning an election first. If they can win an election in their own right, they can by all means implement their manifesto and their doctrines, such as that of collective responsibility, in the traditional way. The fact is that the Conservatives did not win the election in May 2010; nobody won it. We therefore found ourselves going into novel territory and setting up arrangements that we have not seen in the UK since the second world war.

Coalition is different. Everybody is finding their way in this different world. Parliamentary systems, media coverage and party management are all having to take account of it, and the public are having to get used to a different world.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

I remind my hon. Friend that the key cause of this discussion is the decision to have a certain number of Members of Parliament. That was agreed by the coalition, and agreed by vote, but then the Deputy Prime Minister announced that he had changed his mind and would not do what he had agreed to do. This was after the coalition was created.

[Sir Nick Harvey]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, and puts the case from his point of view; I do not criticise him for so doing. Of course, in the coalition agreement, it was agreed that the Liberal Democrats would support legislation that would provide for a redrawing of the boundaries and the creation of 600 seats. The Liberal Democrats fulfilled that obligation in its entirety a couple of years ago. We did not agree to support any barmy map that happened to emerge as the product of that process. We fulfilled our part of the deal some 18 months ago.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Miss Chloe Smith)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) for securing the debate and all hon. Members for contributing to it so extensively. It will not surprise you, Mr Bayley, to hear that I will decline the offer that the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) made at the end of her speech. That subject matter rightly belongs elsewhere, and she would expect me to do you no dishonour by going outside the scope of the debate. I want to address collective ministerial responsibility, as is correct, instead of other extraneous questions.

As I understand it, the central question among the many posed by my hon. Friend was about accountability for collective responsibility. I interpret that to mean that it falls to me today to explain the Government’s doctrine, and to articulate how the Government believe that it ought to be applied.

I shall start with the historical view, in brief. Collective ministerial responsibility has a long-standing place in the British constitution. As far as historians can tell, the doctrine came into being during the reign of George III, who had the perhaps rather dangerous habit of asking Ministers to come and see him individually to give him their views on important matters of state. I do not know whether he did that sitting on a sofa, or whether there were briefings later in the Red Lion. Who would know better than some Members in the Chamber where that style of government ends up, and what happens when senior Ministers cannot agree and go so far as to change their Prime Minister or Head of State without an election, which the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) suggested was a very bad thing indeed? To return to George III, the Cabinet realised that the King’s actions were an attempt to undermine their unity and work out who his supporters were. They therefore agreed that they would tell him exactly the same thing, taking collective responsibility for their decisions.

Clearly, we have moved on a long way since then, in historical terms. Collective ministerial responsibility is about how Ministers behave towards the public and Parliament, rather than towards the Crown. However, the basic point remains the same: Ministers need to be able to have frank discussions and disagreements in private, while maintaining a common purpose once a decision has been taken.

It is to maintain the principle of collective ministerial responsibility that the ministerial code states that the Government will not normally disclose the level at which, or forum where, a decision was taken—my hon. Friend has sought to discuss that matter through parliamentary questions. If the code were not applied, it would be possible to work out which Ministers were present at a meeting. It would also open up debates about which decisions were accorded a higher or lower perceived level of importance than others. That would detract somewhat from the policy quality of issues that might be scrutinised in that way.

Collective ministerial responsibility does not abolish individual responsibility. Each Minister must decide for themselves whether they are happy to remain part of the Government and to support the Government’s decisions. There have been many cases of people feeling no longer able to stand behind the collective conclusion. Famous examples include the noble Lord Heseltine, who, when he was merely Michael Heseltine, famously walked out of Cabinet following the decision on the future of Westland, and the late Robin Cook, who resigned from Cabinet because he did not feel able to take collective responsibility for the decision to go to war in Iraq.

The current version of the ministerial code makes it clear that collective responsibility can be explicitly set aside on occasion. Even before the inclusion of that provision in the code, there was an established practice of doing so on specific issues. Most notably, it has long been the case that collective responsibility does not apply to issues of individual conscience. Most recently, there was a free vote of that kind on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill last week.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

Will the Minister take this opportunity to explain why we were not whipped on the major vote, but were whipped on such things as the business vote?

[Miss Smith]

I would be only too delighted to engage in that discussion with my hon. Friend, but as he knows, I no longer practise the dark arts carried out by what are known as the usual channels. I regret that I would not be able to do that decision justice; nor could I report back to those who make those decisions, if I even tried.

On the ministerial code, it is important to note that there is clear precedent, as has been said several times today, for suspending collective ministerial responsibility on specific issues, when the Government of the day decide that it is appropriate. A notable example, which we have discussed, is Harold Wilson’s decision on whether the UK should continue to be a member of the European Economic Community. He allowed members of his Cabinet to speak and campaign on both sides.

Let me offer the Chamber a few other historical examples. Shortly after the formation of the national Government in 1931, an “agreement to differ” was agreed. The terms of that were published in The Times in January 1932, and in February that year, the Home Secretary began a speech by commenting on the doctrine of collective responsibility:

“The House will have an opportunity…of discussing fully the departure from the doctrine of collective responsibility which is marked by my appearance at this Box this afternoon”—[Official Report, 4 February 1932; Vol. 261, c. 316.]

It is also helpful to note that in 1977, James Callaghan, the then Prime Minister, said:

“I certainly think that the doctrine should apply, except in cases where I announce that it does not.”—[Official Report, 16 June 1977; Vol. 933, c. 552.]

That demonstrates that the terms, duration and enforcement of the arrangement are ultimately a matter for the Prime Minister.

It is most important to add that the current Government have decided to set collective responsibility aside on some specific occasions. That is a fact of life in a coalition, and it shows how our constitutional practice can evolve to suit new situations.